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Friday, December 18, 2009

THE GREAT DEBATE: DOLLS OF EVIL!

Occupying an admittedly small niche in the annals of horror is the killer doll, a concept that takes something so innocent and renders it into a force of sheer, full-blown terror. There have been several examples of this monster in books, TV and movies, but there are inevitably three who stand out from the pack and are usually named as the ne plus ultra of the lot. Those would be:

Chucky, a "Good Guy" doll possessed by the spirit of a homicidal maniac, first seen in CHILD'S PLAY (1988).

The unnamed and unforgettable Zuni fetish doll that relentlessly hunted Karen Black in the made-for-television TRILOGY OF TERROR (1974).

So I ask you, dear readers, which of these three is the one that makes you fudge your undies? For me it would be Talky Tina, hands down. The other two certainly have their merits, especially the Zuni warrior, but Talky Tina just creeps me the fuck out on a completely primal level. Discuss.

Tina's the worst of this lot. But sorry man, for my money the one that scared the piss out of me all through my pre-teen years -- as in, really, I couldn't sleep for months -- was the clown from Poltergeist.

Can't say I've seen any of these, so I'd have to go with something I saw a long time ago, I think in a soap opera. (I don't remember which.) This woman was having a nightmare in which she opened her closet door and inside was this eight-foot Raggedy Ann-type doll that immediately wrapped its huge arms around her. It was saying "Mommy! Mommy!" and would not let her go as she screamed and struggled and tried (and failed) to get away. Man, that freaked me out.

It never scared me, but I used to freak out a kid I babysat by imitating the Zuni fetish doll. He started acting up, all I had to do was go YI-YI-YI-YI-YI-YI and he'd be an angel. Hopefully I didn't traumatize him for life.